Homeliness What food is all about
[Music]
[Applause]
hi everyone this is
extremely privileged and honored to be
speaking to all of you
i love the subject of today focus and
unfocus
we’ve got to focus on things which
matter to us and we got to learn how to
unfocus on things which
actually stop us from moving forward
who actually distract us from our focus
there’s an old saying that climbing the
mountain
is easy mountain is not the hindrance
it’s the little pebble inside your shoe
which stops you so you got to remember
that that you know
the bigger challenges are sometimes
easier to overcome as compared to the
smaller ones which
actually make us stop
and slow down so we’re going to talk
about focus first
from the very childhood i had an extreme
focus of
being in the food industry
of being a chef but i was also clear i
do not want to be just a chef
i want to be a michelin star chef
so the difference between both are
it’s like an actor who’s working in
movies and then there’s an actor which
is an
academy award winning actor
so though the difference is not much
it’s like how we see them
they’re both actors at the same time
there’s a huge
uh amount of challenges
which have to be endured to be that
academy
award-winning actor just like a michelin
star
awarded chef i started early
my i was at my grandmother’s kitchen
helper
almost like four four decades ago
and then very early age i started my own
business with my mom and my grandmom
it was amazing it was such a learning
ground for me
understanding what hospitality is what
it actually means
customer service and how do you value
your customer
more than anything else i learned all
that
at the same time i also learned the idea
of what food means from my grandmom’s
kitchen to the community
kitchens of golden temple to lawrence
garden which was our first business
at the same time i learned if you want
to
have to move forward in life we got to
train ourselves
we’ve got to be trained with extreme
focus
understanding that that is going to be
my next step i joined
welcome group hotel administration
school which is called waksha in manipal
i went there between 1991 and 1994
seems like centuries ago
i learned the basic art of international
cooking
though my focus was totally indian food
but i was trained
with the international cooking
techniques and
tips and ingredients and that actually
helped me to expand my mind
and one day i was just going to the
books in library and
i asked the chef as a chef what is this
guide is
said the red book the red book is a
michelin guide
he’s saying you don’t have to worry
about it it’s mostly for
caucasian or white chefs and don’t worry
it’s impossible for indians to get it i
love the word impossible
it’s like music to me because i’ve
always been a rebel
so impossible word really works and
resonates with my ears
i’m like wow i kept doing more and more
research on it of course
at that time in 1991 or 1992 there was
no indian chef who had ever
achieved it the first indian chef
whoever did it was
veneer party in london and that was in
2001
and i was in new york at that time but i
kept learning
growing understanding on that focus that
it will require extreme level of focus
dedication and to put my blinders on to
achieve that
excellence in cooking
i got an opportunity to work with taj
with obroy’s
with itc hotels and eventually i got an
opportunity
to work with the leela kampanski in
mumbai and that was
eye opening for me first job
big deal in mumbai
i come back after a few years to
amritsar to continue running my business
at that time you know i had given up on
that dream
because i knew it from amritsar i will
just be somebody who’s going to be
making money
i was extremely successful with my
catering business
but i would never be achieving that
glory it’s like you know
you can be a multi-millionaire but to
achieve something
which you can’t buy which you have to
earn which you have to really work for
you have to compete for it
i might not be able to do it so maybe
somewhere back of my mind i’d forgotten
about that focus
but in 2000 there was a mishap which
happened in amritsar in my banquets and
i decided to move to us
and i decided at the age of 29 i moved
to new york
again i started working under many chefs
it’s a tough industry
this extreme level of hard work
uh focus required this extreme level of
racism in the industry there’s like
i’ve never seen this kind of harsh
industry when it comes to
um when it comes to rising
there’s a extreme level of nepotism too
in this industry which is on a different
scale
you know they will not let you rise to
the higher level of executive chefs or
top chefs because everybody is a
roadblock
so that was okay because you know i love
those challenges but some days it was
half
very hard to crack this but i kept the
focus on but it was in paris where i was
working once
in 2008 training under a chef and i
realized when he said that
you know indian chef will never achieve
this kind of glory of international
stages
that really broke me that broke me and
that time i came back to new york i said
now the only way we can achieve it
with extreme focus i focused and i just
stood by that i stood by that dream
which was in my heart for years and
years
but somehow it was impossible to achieve
so i kept suppressing it
and pushing it back on the back burner
but eventually in 2008 i put all my
energy and focus into this in 2010
we opened a restaurant in new york in
2011
on october 4th i got the michelin star
focus but i didn’t want to
after having such an international
award i wanted to use it and kept the
focus on to keep
adding things to my to my resume to my
life to my arts to my creativity i kept
moving on and on
now we talk about unfocus
unfocus is extremely important it’s
actually more important than focus
because there’s so much of distraction
around us there’s so much going around
us there’s so many people pulling us
from all the directions
how do you keep your focus on that one
target you want to keep
people will come and say oh you should
just doing caterings because there’s so
much of money you should just be doing
this there’s so much of
like you know name in it and but you
said no i just wanted the award
but at the same time there’s so much of
so much of hardship in this industry
if i had listened to everyone around me
and focused on them
instead of my dream i would have never
been sitting in front of you guys and
talking about this
i had to figure out a way to filter
unfocusing is filtering you filter it
out
you know if you seen somebody cook we
sift the flour so that all the
impurities
they all are in the strainer and you can
throw it and discard it
and what do you get you get the right
perfect extract
the purity so sometimes you got to
strain this whole thing around you
you need to let things go which don’t
matter to you
you need to let those things be pushed
back because you feel
that they are the we call them vampires
of energy because they’re going to suck
your energy
so that is why it’s extremely important
to unfocus there were so many people
around me in the circles
who would constantly keep pulling me
down
i don’t even remember the names
that’s the power of unfocus
you got to continue to move on
it’s very easy to say i’m focused on
this but being unfocused
is a much bigger challenge there’s
internet there’s so
so much of social media around us
there’s so much of competition around us
who is ahead of us who is behind us does
not matter
it’s a long game and eventually you’re
only competing with yourself
so it just doesn’t matter you when you
have to focus something you need to put
the blinders on
you’ve got to constantly think about one
subject in your mind
repeatedly saying that i want to move
forward
and this is my dream and these are the
things which are blocking me or sucking
my energy
i need to cut them off i need to block
them
it’s very necessary unfocusing is much
harder
because there are too many parameters
and there are too many forms of it
focus only has one form so you got to
remember that
it’s equal in perfect ratios
if you want to rise to excellence
achieve something which is of
global recognition you want to be
applauded by the world
you’ve got to remember you’ve got to
focus on the target and then you begin
to unfocus on things which are actually
those little pebbles and no shoes
which are going to stop you and hinder
you from climbing the biggest mountain
which is right in front of you so clear
your shoes and your mind
and move forward
you’re the new hope for a country you’re
the new hope for your family
cities wherever you are you might be
able to create a new vision of
art or maybe create so much of
employment for people
you might be able to empower people some
of you will open your foundations
maybe you will be the reason we all say
with
a lot of pride that we are indians
that can only happen if we continue to
train ourselves
we cannot stop reinventing we cannot sit
on our laurels
we can’t say that you know what i did
this and i’m done
no you got laurels come to your life and
accolades come to your life in terms of
responsibility
and those are your awards for your focus
but those are responsibilities to push
the card even further
things which uplift you remember to use
those tools
to uplift others thank you
[Music]
you